Drupal, one of our favorite open source content management systems, has announced a beta launch of their hosted service ‘Gardens’. According to TechCrunch:
Open source content management system Drupal is increasingly being used by organizations, corporations and governments to power their websites and communities. But up until now, there was no other way to set up a website or blog with Drupal than having to download and run code from a server.
Built on the Drupal 7 core, currently still in alpha, Acquia powers the entire back-end for Drupal hosted websites and communities so users don’t need to worry about server management and can focus on the personalization and content part of the equation instead.
Unlike Wordpress.com, Buytaert tells me, Drupal Gardens isn’t really meant for individuals looking to set up their own blog as much as it is aimed to help organizations and small businesses set up a Drupal environment with multi-user blogging features, social integration, forums, custom content types, and so on.
Read more: Drupal Goes Hosted With Private Beta Launch of “Gardens”
The software as a service model has always been enticing for agencies and so we’re going to keep an eye on this one. We’ll have to wait and see what compromises they’ve made and limitations set on the system. But removing the hassle of servers and hosting could prove to be a big help to lots of organizations who want the community features of Drupal but don’t have the technical staff to support it.
